The goal of detecting and locating threatening objects or items such as weapons has increased in importance as society becomes more violent. In response to this goal, security screening systems have become more prevalent and are being used in facilities and places where the need for screening was previously not considered necessary. To increase safety while keeping public inconvenience at a minimum, the focus of the security screening industry is to increase the accuracy of distinguishing between threatening and non-threatening objects while maintaining a high throughput.
Exemplary security screening systems (also referred to as “system(s)”) are configured to rely on passive magnetic sensors or magnetometers to detect threatening objects. Such configurations of security screening systems depend on the unvarying and uniformity of the Earth's magnetic field to operate effectively. That is, passive magnetic sensors (also referred to as “sensor(s)”) define a sensing region that extends into a portal passageway of the systems for detecting disturbances or variances in the uniformity of the magnetic field of the Earth. The variances in the magnetic field are called gradients. Exemplary weapons and/or threatening objects are routinely formed from ferrous or ferromagnetic material (iron). As ferrous or ferromagnetic material passes through a portal passageway, the Earth's magnetic field is disturbed or varied and is registered by the passive sensors. That is, the sensors detect this change or variance in the Earth's magnetic field as a gradient and output a response that is configured as a voltage signal. The security screening system interprets the gradient (voltage signal) as the detection of a ferrous object. In this manner, the security screening system indicates the presence of a potential weapon(s) within the portal passageway of the system.
However, the Earth's magnetic field varies slowly, and randomly, over a period of time that interrupts the operation of security screening systems based on passive sensor configurations. For example, the periodic rising and setting of the Sun causes diurnal variations to the Earth's magnetic field. Additionally, unpredictable solar flares and magnetic storms produced by the Sun randomly impact and vary the uniformity of the Earth's magnetic field. These influences are referred to as “far-field disturbances.” Furthermore, “local disturbances” can influence and vary the uniformity of the Earth's magnetic field. Exemplary local disturbances include man-made objects such as wheelchairs and cars, and even larger ferromagnetic objects such as airport subways.
Security screening systems are designed to compensate for these far-field and local disturbances. However, baseline responses produced by the sensors of the systems tend to wander over a period of time as a result of these far-field and local disturbances. Additionally, electronic noise and instability inherent in the sensors combine with the far-field and local disturbances to compound the detrimental effects on operational capabilities of security screening systems.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide data analysis methods and detection/location methods for security screening systems to compensate for far-field disturbances, local disturbances, electronic noise, and instability inherent in the sensors. Moreover, there is a need to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the magnetic sensors with data analysis methods and detection/location methods that compensate for DC drift and single-point response spikes, which are induced or outputted by magnetic sensors of security screening systems.